Shorts
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10 Myths About Introverts~
It’s a list. It’s about me. It’s about telling the world how to deal with me. How could I not link to this?
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Stammering
I’ve had a stammering problem for as long as I can remember. It’s a very selective stammer—surfacing only when I try to say certain words, and that too only in certain circumstances—but it’s enough to play on my mind whenever I talk to groups of people1.
Usually one wouldn’t be comfortable writing about such a thing unless it was glaringly obvious, at which point it wouldn’t matter. But writing about things like this goes with the territory—I write what I think about, and this is one of the things I think about.
I’ve lived with this for close to 14 years, and I’ve tried to figure out what sets it off the hardest as a part of self-therapy in controlling and reducing it. The usual suspects are always there—anxiety, emotional state, et al.—but there are some specific triggers that seem to stay constant regardless of the situation.
Through various experiments, I’ve concluded that words starting with the sounds 'bə, 'pə and 'tə are the hardest for me say unless I’m already in a flow, i.e. not starting to talk again after a pause. So if I’m supposed to start a new sentence with a word like, e.g. bubble, I would get stuck unless I compose myself and try to say it with a little concentration. Of course, depending on the situation, words like “because” or “private” can be equally hard to say.
This might come as a surprise to many people who have spoken to me or heard me talk in person over the years—I would think even my parents to a degree. It’s like one of those things you probably won’t notice unless you are looking for it. I guess people who read this and know me in real life will have it at the back of their mind whenever they meet me from now on.
Though I must say that my condition is a lot better than a lot of other people who are suffering—in every sense of the word—from stammering. Mine is barely noticeable owing to the fact that I speak so less (whether speaking less is a cause or result of my stammering, I will leave it to you to speculate), and partly because I’ve worked on it for the past four to five years, trying to reduce its severity. It used to be so bad that I wouldn’t be able to say even my name properly (which I can’t, sometimes, even now).
My mother tells me that my tendency to talk has grown inversely with age. I.e. I used to talk a lot as a child, and now I barely do. It’s funny though; I don’t remember stammering as a child, but I do now. One of the great ironies of life. It’s funny enough to make me smile—sometimes.
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To be honest, it’s groups that make me uncomfortable, not individual people. Nothing gets a crowd going like realising that they’re a crowd. Talking to one person is a lot more intimate and I find it much easier to talk to a single person or very small groups of people; small enough that I can look them in the eye when I say something. ↩
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For Want of Knowledge
Knowledge is this wonderful thing. It is infinite, in the practical sense of the word. There’s enough knowledge in this world if one seeks it. Knowledge isn’t right or wrong. It’s one of the few things that’s available in such copious amounts and yet isn’t bad for you regardless of how much you consume.
Everybody in this world wants to share their knowledge. People write books, blogs, newspaper articles. If they can’t write, they talk at conferences or public gatherings—there’s always someone willing to share their knowledge.
The only reason a person might not know something is because they actively chose to not know it. Ignorance is voluntary and intentional. That’s why we always look at a person with suspicion when they say they “I didn’t know”. It’s because we just expect people to know … because knowledge is so prevalent.
We as a species have lost our “want” for knowledge. We know what we need to know, and we’re happy with that. We wait for knowledge to come to us, rather than go out and find it. How many times have you said “Nobody told me”? Was the reply “You never asked”?
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I Eat Alone
Eating is one of my highlights of the day. I love to sit down to eat a beautiful, plentiful and satisfying meal at the end of a day. And I do it alone.
I’ve long maintained that every day that we are alive and a part of society, we spend it compromising in everything we do because that’s the only way to keep your sanity and get things done. Which is why when I do something that is a hundred-percent mine, I don’t like anything less than getting a hundred-percent out of it. Eating a meal is one such thing. It’s an activity that is all about me; my food, my senses, my satisfaction, my time. I don’t want to be hurried or disturbed. I don’t want to hear about your day or what you felt about it. I want to be left alone with my plate of food. I spend that time looking at other people (if I’m at a restaurant. Yes, I go to restaurants alone.) and how they’re behaving with others around them. Or I spend it thinking about an idea that might have caught my fancy that day, or just thinking about life in general. The point is, I can do anything I want with that time I get to myself. And I like having that choice.
Of course, being at a University means I usually hurry through my meals because I have something important to do afterwards. But given the opportunity to have a good dinner, I usually eat it alone. Given a choice, that’s how I like it.
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A reason to do something is as important as the thing itself. If you don’t know the reason why you’re doing something, don’t do it. Such things are usually impulsive or emotional, neither of which can lead to anything good in the long run.
Looking for a reason will make you pause while you try to find it. That pause, that little hesitation is enough to validate what you’re doing. Our brains are hardwired to see all the flaws in something before we see the good. If you’re doing something you shouldn’t, it’s because you intentionally blocked out the bad things. A momentary pause will just show them to you again, and maybe you won’t do it.
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Phone
Text and email are polite invitations to a conversation. They happen at the speed and leisure of both the sender and the receiver. In stark contrast, when you get a phone call, it’s almost always a convenient time for the caller and a bad time for the recipient, who I refer to as the “victim” because I insist on accuracy. My philosophy is that every phone conversation has a loser.
I don’t like to talk on the phone with everyone, but the few people I do, I always send a text first asking them if they have 10 minutes.
~ via marco
(via marco)
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Let’s Be Honest
Anyone who knows me for more than a day knows I am a very frank person. I believe life is too short to pretend that you’re someone you’re not, so I don’t. While you might not like what I have to say — professionally or personally — you’ll know where we stand. Unfortunately, we as a society have lost out on this kind of honesty over time. Let’s face it, we all know that truth hurts, and even though we’re taught to be honest right from primary school, the adult society is the biggest hypocrite when it actually comes down to practising it.
I got linked to an article which talks about “Radical Honesty” (a book and concept by Brad Blanton). I haven’t read the book or attended any of Blanton’s workshops but my understanding of the concept after reading the article is to be honest about what you think and feel, but in a way that teaches you something about yourself and the person you’re talking to. The difference in plain old-fashioned honesty and Blanton’s concept is that you’re not being honest just for the heck of it — you’re doing it to make your relationships with people much more transparent and clear, and hence leading a simpler and more enriching life yourself.
I’ll admit that I’m not honest all the time. That doesn’t mean I lie, in the sense that I deliberately cook up stories that aren’t true, but that I withhold things that I know will hurt the other person unless I’m specifically asked for my opinion. There’s a big difference in being honest and being cruel, and one shouldn’t be cruel. The age old philosophy of “Treat others as you would have them treat you” holds here. If you consider their honesty in a particular situation would be a good thing, you should be honest yourself. I’ve observed (as the article too points out) that when faced with honesty, people tend to become honest themselves, and the result is a much clearer understanding of where the two people stand with each other.
Part of me being honest and frank is the reason that I don’t understand people. People are the only enigma in this world that I can’t come to grips with — everytime I think I’ve figured something out, it gets proven wrong the next day. I’ve stopped trying to understand things that aren’t said loud and clear. Sure, I can tell (sometimes) that you’re sulking — but I won’t know why. I’ll ask you if you’re doing alright, and I’ll take your answer at face-value. The idea is, if you want something, you should make the effort of asking for it so that it’s clear to you and others what you want. That is a kind of frankness as well.
It’s not easy, being honest. You could say I am “convenient”-honest/frank, and that’s a compromise most of us have to make if we don’t want to be shot in the middle of the street. People tend to be more honest with a person the more comfortable they are with them, simply because they know that things will not get too sour. People like to avoid conflict as much as they can (I’m no different). But the idea is to be frank with people in general. In my experience, journalists and lawyers do this pretty well. It’s because of their line of work, their lack of time for bullshit makes them cut through the pretences and get straight to the point 1. But then I also believe that it takes some characteristic of personality for people to be alright with going down this path — a high-degree of independence. You have to be alright with making people angry or upset, but you also have to be a quick judge of situations and the “bigger picture”. It might sound complicated, but believe me, it’s easier and much more satisfying than living your life pretending to be someone you’re not.
References
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1 I have quite a few friends who are journalists. I think you can see why. ↩
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Love something for the things you like in it, and hate the things in it you don’t. What you finally feel about something is decided by whichever overpowers the other. You can’t love something when you hate more things about it than you like. No, love is not blind. Love voluntarily closes its eyes to things it doesn’t want to see. Faults are only endearing when you like more things than you hate; realised how you can’t stand the annoying little things you used to love when you no longer love the thing itself?
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The Emperor’s New Antenna~
Every recent consumer electronics product from Apple—definitely the iPad, but all iterations of the iPhone including the initial one—has been greeted with rounds of articles crowing about what an arrogant, foolhardy mistake it is and how this will finally, finally, be the moment the emperor is revealed to have no clothes.
The difference between Apple and others is that Apple succeeds by wanting to make better products than competitors, and others succeed by wanting their competitors to fail.
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I watched “Inception” yesterday with a few friends. Good movie, and the kind that forces people to try and make sense of it even hours after it is over. And that’s why I don’t like to watch interesting movies with other people.
“Oh wait! That top didn’t stop spinning!”
Yes, I noticed that. And a thousand other things that I know you missed. Like the fact that Saito wasn’t connected to Cobb and Ariadne when they were trying to save him from his limbo, but Cobb still managed to find him somehow. Or the fact that Fischer didn’t recognise Cobb in the second level of his dream (yet they masked themselves up for the first level to not blow their cover). I could go on, but it’s just a fucking movie. Watch, enjoy, and leave it in the theatre. Don’t think you’re the only one who saw it, and definitely do not keep bringing things up like high school students after an exam.
It’s okay to be excited, but don’t get annoying.
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Bad Habits
You know those little things people do that annoys everyone around them? Like chewing loudly, or eating without closing their mouth. Or shaking a leg when they’re sitting — it’s just small things that you do unconsciously. I do none of those things. I was trying to think of one bad habit that I might have, and that’s probably that I chew my nails. But, again, I don’t do that when I’m not alone.
Part of the reason is that I know it annoys people, and if someone else did it, it would annoy me — so I don’t. Of course, you don’t need a real reason to not have a bad habit, do you?
I don’t have any bad habits.
ADDENDUM: A “bad habit” doesn’t have to be something that just harms you — like smoking. A bad habit is any habit that is considered undesirable1.
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Ways To Be Seen at a Party
Be taller, bigger than the ones around you.
Be louder than the ones around you, and make sure people really hear you.
Jump up and down, using other people’s shoulders as leverage if you have to.
Break something or make a scene.
Climb up on stage and grab the microphone.
Get naked.
Tell a riveting story that lasts long enough for other people to finish their conversations and turn to listen to you.
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How I Accidentally Got 700,000 Fans on Facebook~
“They were the sort of people, I soon discovered, who were also fans of such inane but popular Facebook fan pages as “Punching Things” and “I hate it when I get fingerprints all over my phone.” But each time one of them would become a fan of Shut Up, I’m Talking, their circle of Facebook friends would blindly do the same – causing its frighteningly viral spread.”
I wonder who was the first person to make a page about an idea rather than a thing. He/She should be hung upside down and launched into orbit.
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Possessive
There’s an inherent romanticism in being possessive. It involves admitting the fact that someone else has the ability to see, care or love the same as you. Or, at least enough to threaten you.
I wonder what the reaction would be if a possessive person was told that the subject of their feelings wasn’t as appealing to others as it was to them. Theoretically, I would assume that it would be more offensive to them than anything else. But it’ll be interesting to watch.
